The Winter Bus
by Leaf Skeletons
Summary: The soon-to-be life of Luke Castellan, as forseen by the Fates.


When one looks into darkness

There is always something there

_Yeats_

* * *

Ambling down the pavement next to an old cemetery cloistered off with an iron gate were a boy and a girl. The girl was tipsy, the boy wasted. This much was apparent from his flushed face and bad singing. There was a punched-in paper crown in his curls and his eyes gleamed. The girl had an arm linked through his.

They were very happy.

"He's going to die tomorrow." This was an old lady, a ragged hag (you see ragged children everyday on the news, they exist, too) cloaked in dark cobwebs.

"Drink Driving." Another one coughed, bringing up a liver-spotted hand to her sallow cheek.

The last clacked her tongue against yellowing teeth. "Hit-and-run accident," she said lightly. "The boy was trying to protect his sister; the woman who knocked him down will be too scared to help. Tragedy."

And this was the worst part of the night, if simply because of the tone she used to say the last word. It was light, uncaring and indifferent. The kind of tone you'd use to say Cup, for instance, or Spoon.

They nodded as one, and she who started the conversation- and she was named Clotho- started pouring the tea, the hot liquid sloshing into porcelain cups.

Liver-hands, known as Atropos, pulled her cup with a black rim (like her heart, she had joked before the world had believed her) towards her with shaking hands.

And finally, the last: Lachechis.

They sat in silence for a few minutes as they drank. The graveyard had only the blushing light of a dying streetlamp to cast half-hearted shadows on the long grass. The drooping leaves of weeping willows brushed against the old gravestones sadly. It had just rained and it was two minutes past three on a Tuesday morning. The air tasted bright and the night was clear and without stars. A blemished seraph with hollow eyes looked down on a podium under which the remains of a new-born lay.

Finally, Lachechis spoke as she set her cup down. "So, Clotho, tell us of the boy, of Hermes's child. The one gifted to May days ago."

Clotho looked at her sisters smugly. "This will be the one who will determine the fate of the world." She looked towards Lachechis, who controlled the years allotted to a person. "How long will he have?"

Lachechis thought for a minute, aligning the planets in her brain as she assessed the situation. "Twenty and two." She laughed without humour. "That will be enough, I think."

The two looked at Atropos last. With an almost disgusting interest, Clotho asked, "Well, how will he die?"

Atropos smiled in mischief, the icy wind laughing down her withered spine. "But who ends a tale before it begins, Clotho, dear?" She placed the teacup down and smiled, her eyes glittering with curiousity. "Tell us what you have planned for the boy."

Clotho smiled proudly and opened her mouth to speak, but Atropos interrupted, pulling out a damp stack of cards. Both sisters groaned as she removed the wrapper with child-like intrigue.

"Let me try and figure out what you have decreed." She smiled, fanning the tarot cards out on the grass before her, the edges bitten and jagged. "I have been practicing."

Clotho snorted derisively. "Foolish mortal excuse for magic."

"Men were made of the Gods." Atropos replied absently, plucking a card from the stack and holding it up before her sisters.

"The world." She said softly. "Travelling, Clotho. Travelling?"

"He will run away, yes." Her sister said, slightly bitter at being outshone. "His life at home will not be pleasant; there will be fear; it will be cruel because the mother does not take care of the child. Rather, he will be the one who is _here_ while his mother's mind has gone away, never returning."

"Not nearly entertaining enough!" Lachecis scorned. "Come, Clotho that has been done many times!"

"The world means that he will have pleasure within his travels." Atropos said again, desperate to be brought back to the conversation. Laughter echoed off the streets as the night-club opposite the road blasted open with a stream of merrymakers.

Clotho rolled her eyes. "There will be a girl-"

Lachechis nodded with newfound interest. "A lover- Will it be sad, a tragic story of destroyed love?"

"Sadder: A lost friend. He will lose her and they will both blame each other, sadly." Her last word had no trace of feeling. "She will join Artemis and have eternal youth, roaming the earth while he… moves on."

_A black haired girl with lightning eyes and the boy as they made their way in empty buses and cold trains, wearing each other's jackets. There could have been so much._

"And then?" Lachechis pressed.

Clotho told them.

_A windswept hill and a screaming child with blonde curls. She told them of desperation and love- whatever kind you choose- between two friends as one of them realised that she had to stay, and made the other realise that he had to go._

_ The leaving, that was the worst part._

Somewhere in the distance, an owl chirped as it swooped down to grab a mouse. A baby started to cry.

"What comes next?" Lachechis asked again.

Atropos put her shrivelled arm out for attention. "The devil!" She gasped, holding out the card.

"Not yet!" Clotho rolled her eyes at her sister's eagerness. "The devil brings the boy over yes, but first comes the temptation."

"Why?"

"He realises his father is a god in title only. He discovers that his friend has died because none of the Olympians-" And it was a mark of the influence of the fates that the skies did not thunder- "ever cared enough about their children, never cared enough about him. To him, his anger is righteous. He is the black knight to right the wrongs of the evil kings."

"And so he betrays the gods."

_But first, they betray him. _

_ Luke was running away from Camp as the son of Poseidon lay struck with scorpion venom in the arena. In his face, there was defiance and yet there was regret. He looked back at the Hill once; it was true- but only to see Thalia's pine. Then he ran and did not look back._

Just that moment, Atropos pulled out a string and a pair of gnarled scissors. Shrugging at her sisters- "What, this one is old; prepared"- She snapped the string, the edges bouncing off the metal.

In a house by the sea with shells in plaster walls, the extended hand of a grandfather that was dangling over the side of a bed fell limp.

"There will be only one thing left for Luke, then." Clotho continued. "It will be the promise that he made to a girl called Annabeth, a promise of family he was determined to keep because he didn't have one. That will be what makes him think it was right; a promise of vengeance for the dead, and the promise of a future for the living.

Lachechis plucked a piece of grass from the earth, flicking it at a marble gravestone. She collected the words engraved on its smooth surface- _we are very unhappy_- before drawing her attention back to the story.

"So he betrays the gods, then what?"

"He poisons the girl."

Lachechis let out a scandalised gasp. "His promise meant nothing, Clotho?"

(You think that the fates are choosing Luke's path for him, is that it? That none of this was his fault, or his glory? Maybe, Clotho was just telling you what she knew would happen.

How it happened though, was entirely Luke's choice.

Clotho, she just _knew._

She just saw, and she just _told_.)

And then, Clotho told of them of Kronos as Atropos pulled out another card. On the yellowing paper, a man dangling downwards from his foot grimaced up at them.

"The hanged man: rebirth. Sacrifice."

"He goes the next step." Clotho confirmed as she raised her empty cup once more for Lachechis to fill. "At this point, I think, it is not so much that he wants to, as much as he feels he _has_ to. At this point, he has no one. He still believes in his mission, yes, but that is dwindling."

Just outside the nightclub, a girl with cold air in her ponytail had her first kiss on alcohol bathed lips. She would grow up to marry the boy whose mouth was on hers, and they would be very happy.

Clotho told them, finally, of a broken city put to sleep- "oh, just like the fairy-tale!" said Lachechis- and of death (now these all had their own stories) and courage and cowardice and finally, she was reaching the end.

The next card was pulled out. "The judgement."

* * *

_"Your journey nears its end." The angel said, his sculpted face aloof and cold. "But before it is complete, there is one thing you must do."_

_ "What?" Queried the fool._

_ "Your past must be laid to rest."_

_ The fool was bitter. "I have left my past behind, there is nothing but dust."_

_ The angel glared. "There is no running from the past. Are you a coward? You must bring it up once again, and smooth the river and make your wrongs right."_

_ The fool blushed with guilt, peeking up at the angel from under his eyelashes. The angel handed him a trumpet and he held it, hesitating for a moment. The angel's eyes were softer now, forgiving and encouraging. _

_ The fool knew what he had to do. _

_ He raised the trumpet to his lips and blew._

* * *

And so, Luke plunged the dagger into his skin as he remembered his promise to his_ family_, as he attempted, to rid (not just himself, note) the world of his demons.

And yet, this was not the end.

-x-

The last card Atropos pulled out was a familiar one.

The world.

A life lost, a devil slaughtered and everything coming to fruition. A broken soul put to peace.

She lay the card silently into the long grass.

The fates did not choose Luke's path for him; the cards and Clotho's words, they didn't mean much, really. They were just telling a story of what was going to happen. They carved the path, yes, but it was the Boy who walked it.

He chose his whole journey.

He chose to befriend the girl and he loved her (whichever way you choose), from the moment they met to the moment she died. From the moment she awoke, to the moment he died.

He chose to betray the Gods.

He chose to come back.

He chose to give his life and to clear (not just his name, note) the world.

He chose, in the end, to be who he truly was.

And that, you see, was the meaning of it all.

The fates stood as one and left the graveyard and the weeping willow tree.

_We are very unhappy_

_ But in the end we all are_

_ That makes us alive_

_ Because there is the opposite_

_ And it will be the morning again_

_ And I think I can be content_


End file.
